Bulgaria's State Energy and Water Regulatory Commission (SEWRC) said on October 14 that it would ban the quarterly billing of electricity use. The decision was taken at the regulator's closed-door meeting on October 13, SEWRC deputy chairperson Valentin Kirchev said, as quoted by Dnevnik daily.

SEWRC officials will meet with representatives of the three companies running power distribution firms in Bulgaria - Czech CEZ, German E.ON and Austrian EVN - to notify them of the decision. All three companies were strongly in favour of introducing quarterly billing, which they have said would cut down operating costs, but only CEZ introduced it earlier this year.

The regulator decided that quarterly billing was dropped because of "the lack of public trust and negative coverage in the media," as quoted by Dnevnik, even though it acknowledged that quarterly billing was a widely-spread practice in other European Union member states.

"Sooner or later quarterly billing, or billing for an even longer period of time would become reality. But right now there is no public support for that," Kirchev said, as quoted by mediapool.bg.